Mel Carnahan was a popular governor

Mrs Carnahan, 66, who has never run for or held public office, compared her husband's unfinished work to that of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King.

"We remain heirs of a legacy, heirs of a dream," she said.

No-one has posthumously won election to the Senate before.

Mr Carnahan and his incumbent Republican rival John Ashcroft were running neck-and-neck in a hard-fought campaign at the time of his death.

Difficult campaign

The Republicans though faced a difficult campaign against a newly-widowed woman and her popular late husband.

"How do you campaign against a ghost? There's no precedent for this," said political scientist Richard Fulton of Northwest Missouri State University.

Three widows of congressmen are currently members of the US House of Representatives - Mary Bono, a Republican, and Lois Capps, a Democrat, both from California, and Jo Ann Emerson, a Missouri Republican.

All three first won special elections to succeed their husbands, and all three won re-election in 1998.